This class is about composition, rhetoric and civic engagement. Throughout the semester, you will compose "texts" using a range of available technologies and media (from alphabetic texts on the page to multimodal compositions on the web, among others). You will write/compose in a variety of genres and for a variety of audiences and purposes. As composition, rhetoric and digital media scholars Cynthia Selfe and Pamela Takayoshi put it, “[i]n an increasingly technological world, students need to be experienced and skilled not only in reading (consuming) texts employing multiple modalities, but also in composing in multiple modalities, if they hope to communicate successfully within the digital communication networks that characterize workplaces, schools, civic life, and span traditional cultural, national, and geopolitical borders” (Multimodal Composition, 3). We will use this wiki to both publish your multimodal pieces, and to work through the collaborative process of developing ideas for larger multimodal pieces. In his book Soul of a Citizen, writer and activist Paul Rogat Loeb maintains that the personal story has the power to "provide the organic connection that binds one person to another" (119), a crucial element in building community. Telling our stories and reflecting on our lives, he says, can "help us connect with the stories of others, and with a larger narrative of being" (148). So, in this class, we begin the semester by exploring personal beliefs and telling stories that inform those beliefs in a This I Believe audio essay. Click on the page names in the left column to read and listen to each student's essay.
Welcome to the Writing 3020 Class Wiki
This class is about composition, rhetoric and civic engagement. Throughout the semester, you will compose "texts" using a range of available technologies and media (from alphabetic texts on the page to multimodal compositions on the web, among others). You will write/compose in a variety of genres and for a variety of audiences and purposes. As composition, rhetoric and digital media scholars Cynthia Selfe and Pamela Takayoshi put it, “[i]n an increasingly technological world, students need to be experienced and skilled not only in reading (consuming) texts employing multiple modalities, but also in composing in multiple modalities, if they hope to communicate successfully within the digital communication networks that characterize workplaces, schools, civic life, and span traditional cultural, national, and geopolitical borders” (Multimodal Composition, 3). We will use this wiki to both publish your multimodal pieces, and to work through the collaborative process of developing ideas for larger multimodal pieces.
In his book Soul of a Citizen, writer and activist Paul Rogat Loeb maintains that the personal story has the power to "provide the organic connection that binds one person to another" (119), a crucial element in building community. Telling our stories and reflecting on our lives, he says, can "help us connect with the stories of others, and with a larger narrative of being" (148). So, in this class, we begin the semester by exploring personal beliefs and telling stories that inform those beliefs in a This I Believe audio essay. Click on the page names in the left column to read and listen to each student's essay.